Member Info for steph

We had a 600 point drop peak to trough and now a 200 point recovery. All blazingly fast.

For my money anything under NAV/share in all but a serious recession is a good buy. With NAV/share expected to be 960 to 1000 on the year end cut off shortly in 2 weeks.

Good luck all.

Accepting no really big rally on the news if/when it comes but I think an off ramp to Ukrainian situation emerging.

Putin has given himself a get out of jail card in not describing the invasion as more than a special limited military operation. He can leave Zelenskiy in post and not at least in Russion media be described as having failed.

The deal may be that Ukraine gives up claims on the Crimea and Donansk which were gone anyway in all but name in 2014. There will be a laundry list of further pledges or promises face saving for both sides but largely meaningless as was the assurances given to Gorbachev about NATO not expanding Eastwards if he agreed to disband the Warsaw pack.

Ukraine will get something more valuable as NATO membership. The weapons to defend itself on top of the demonstrated will and ability to do so even at the sent levels of armament. It will also get global reconstruction funds and probably better free trade deals than it has. Russia does not get much except the tiny enclaves of Crimea and DOnansk. Many economic sanctions will never be removed. It does get a crude credibility that if it threatens to attack that must be taken seriously. WHole mess could have been avoided if Ukraine took serially tight risk of full invasion and voluntarily let go of 3 small provinces with a majority who wanted to exit Ukraine anyway. Stubbornness on both sides and unrealistic intelligence. I hear Putins chief of intelligence is on house arrest so maybe PUtin was given poor intelligence on the ability and will to fight.

America fires starting gun on new gold rush in shale

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a5a6e78c-a3a3-11ec-b05a-8d7b276f1397?shareToken=5a259bce701ac82b1f15bf808e52b225

pushed send prematurely

2000 by September 2024 now looking much more ambitious but I stick to it. Market sentiment will shift at some time in the next 3 years and with it our relationship to trailing NAV/share.

I have a nearly similar 2.5 year growth scenario for RR SP but I think more uncertain. Nothing else I've looked at comes close. have a few L&G battery and L &G global robotics. Also a few SMT. Made a quick pound shorting oil at 130 but no idea in the short run if it goes up or down from 95. Long run oil must go down to 60 or less and if one holds a short position for long enough it will come good. Shorting not really my thing though. Happy for nearly all of my positon to be GROW.

Roll on 2000.

maybe, in spite of headwinds, we are pulling our of this peak to trough dip of just over 50%. I think dip was overdone and went lower than some rational equilibrium between the headwinds and the intrinsic value. The big revaluation of large chunks of our portfolio downwards just is not happening. True our traded 3 (UIPath, trust pilot an Cazoo) have taken a terrible dip since IPO but we were selling those down aggressively before the bi dip locking in profit.

On our last round valuations in our untraded portfolio we made subjective adjustments down. We don't know by how much but whatever the % it indicates a cautious approach to valuations that will stand the test of market ups and downs. ON our untraded shies that have no last round valuation to go by we have a lower multiple of sales as our evaluation tool than we had pre surge so no froth there at all. This sector represents half of our untraded portfolio.

My spread sheet has GROW at 2000 by September 2024. this looked a tad conservative in September 2021 as it only needed 19% per ahhum growth in NAV/share compunded over 3 years fro our Spetember SP.

Hard to tell what the market reaction would be to a compromise between Russia and Ukraine. Obviously positive but we were going down before the conflict started so maybe not as you say too dramatic a bounce back.

Inflation the big factor mainly due to the feedback loop to interest rates. IN itself inflation has no impact and might even raise the nominal value of the NAV.

My guess is that the central banks realize that whatever interest rate rises they put in it will have little impact on controlling inflation. That ship has sailed. Inflation is being driven by push factors of real commodity shortages which interest rate rises do little about short of crashing the economy so demand goes down. I think central banks will talk the talk but very cautiously walk the walk on rises. Signaling rather than doing. Carney was good on this. If you can signal policy successfully you don’t actually have to do the deed itself.

FEB 1 odds:
Looking into the crisis, Amundi analysts have put a 60% chance for a peaceful compromise, a 30% probability for a limited military incursion and a 10% risk of a full scale invasion.

THat’s also what I thought and was invested accordingly. Wrong. The 10% risk came up.

Going forward we might get a surprise on the upside this week. Ukraine who was not expecting Russia would ever dare do a ful scale invasion (thus offered nothing to prevent it) now more realistic and Russia who were not expecting much military resistance (which it is clearly getting) now more realistic. That bodes will for some sort of messy agreement. Neither side has any incentive to continue fighting. It is just a matter of finding the terms that reflects the balance of power and risk for each party. Realism a friend of any odds of agreement.

I think Russia realizes that full regime change is now just too difficult. It can be achieved in a military sense by destroying the country but Russia would then have to rebuild at it’s own expense and endure decades of sanctions. Better to cut a deal with current government however modest that is and the Eu and USA will pay for reconstruction and sanctions will be more moderate.

Russia walks away with something in that scenario. Having shown themselves capable of the unthinkable 10% they will be taken more seriously next time and “diplomacy” might be more fruitful in future in a variety of situations. Nixon made this high policy. The other side needed to think you were crazy enough to start WW3 before they took your threats seriously. Diplomacy at the barrel of a gun not hearts and minds but that is often the way of the world.

Anyhow I’ve been picking up a few shares in RR, and others that will benefit from a risk on feeling. I do think with even the messiest of ceasefires and in spite of rising interest rates we will be at NAV/share with a couple of months or 1000. Given the deep dip we just had October 2022 on the half yearly update is probably the earliest we get back to 11.80 on the back of trailing NAV/share around 1100. Will be a while until my SP premium of 70% over NAV/share happens if at all.

Not quite sure of how purchasing VCT shares translates to the PLC NAV. Must help but a better accounts analyst than I needs to look at it.

Thursday 10 March, 2022
Draper Esprit VCT plc
Transaction in Own Shares
Molten Ventures VCT plc
Legal Entity Identifier: 2138003I9Q1QPDSQ9Z97
Transaction in O wn S hares
10 March 2022
Molten Ventures VCT plc announces that on 10 March 2022 the Company purchased the following shares for cancellation:
Ordinary shares of 5p each 377,455 58.14p 0.21%

Molten
Consensus forecasts updated
The consensus outlook for 2022 has been updated.

2022 revenue forecast increased from UK£303.3m to UK£373.1m.
EPS estimate unchanged from UK£1.80 at last update.
Capital Markets industry in the United Kingdom expected to see average net income growth of 12% next year.
Consensus price target of UK£11.35 unchanged from last update.
Share price rose 13% to UK£7.20 over the past week.
See Future Growth

Jefferies raises Molten Ventures to 'buy' (hold) - price target 1,000 pence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War

See map. There are hardly any yellow arrows and an awful lot of red. A bit like a Risk game towards the end.

Ukranians don’t have a military win end game beyond asking/demanding for western countries to fight alongside them triggering WW3. It is as if they expected it and this affected their judgment on what compromise they needed to offer before the shooting started. Stubbornness all round and not just on the Russian side.

There was a good reason why USA and USSR never fought each other directly in the whole cold war period no matter what the provocation. Just too dangerous. Hungary, KOrea, Vietnam, were never direct.

For my money the hot war phase and with it market interest will end sooner than expected. Helping the market the lack of any western country fighting inside Ukraine. Russian debt only 20% of GDP and well distributed throughout the world. Already having been junk not any systemic risk. Well hedged.

I made nearly half of my expected 3 month short gains from shorting oil when it hit 130 in under a day. I am not a day trader but the case to continue yet one yesterday was not compelling at 108 to hold the short. ALso needed the new cash for my strained GROW position.

Closed my oil short. Profit profit and I need the cash for my grow margin.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-why-think-molten-ventures-114519667.html

We had a half yearly stating gross portfolio value up 27% to 887p NAV/share.

SO 35% over the year is another 8% on top of that. So NAV/share about 960 for year end.

We have had a long debate on what premium or discount to NAV/share should sp be. Historically at year end it has varied from 0 to 35%. Twice now SP has dipped below NAV/share on some big external anxiety. The first was COVID scare in March 2020 and now the Ukrainian war and threatened interest rate rises this month. Historically SP dips below NAV/share are brief.

THis time round who knows. FOr my money I think the SP will be above NAV/share pretty quick. At the current SP losses are priced in due to recent revaluation of tech stock in general (valuations are how we show profit and loss) but we are clearly not having losses so a big upwards shoot is due. We clearly lost some money on our 3 traded shares we own but they were never above 20% of our portfolio and we were able to sell over half of those probably at prices above the September year end valuations so the net losses there will be modest and balanced by gains in our unlisted shares..

This is a high growth share with that growth not priced in at all right now. I am stretched to the limit to hold these. Can Easley double from here in under 12 months without equivalent downside risk. In September 2021 we were an sp of 11.8.

Good luck

Molten (LSE: GROW, Euronext Dublin: GRW), a leading venture capital firm investing in and developing high growth digital technology businesses, today announces that following the closing of an externally led round in a portfolio company which is yet to be disclosed, the fair value of Molten's holding has increased by £76m based on the value of the round.

The increase in fair value supports the previously announced year-end guidance of fair value growth in the region of 35%.

I’m hanging on to my leveraged GROW even though at 80% leverage for me is much too high. Hope a rising SP brings down my leverage without a need to sell.

Took out a short on oil at 130 barrel . Means I loose 28,000 pounds it we see 230 dollars a barrel but gain 14,000 if oil comes back down quickly to 80 as I expect. WIsh me luck on that one

Agree with all that.

THey had a terrible transition from a 100% planned economy to a free market. Shock therapy just resulted in those who had money (basically only mafia) or connections in the old system were able to take advantage of the new. Issuing shares to the whole population just resulted in those connected or corrupt individuals mopping up a controlling share in companies almost for free and then asset stripping them.

I once saw a poll that the Russian population thought that the “gift” of 70 talented economist Ph’ds from Harvard and the like was a plot to destroy them. The image of these earnest Americans who had no clue what existed because they were not taught it in school making recommendations to do what they were familiar with stays with me. Naive to the limit.

Russia ended up with “crony capitalism”. During shock therapy the life expectancy dropped by 10 years. Unheard of decline short of brutal war and the ultimate measurement of the economic and social system one has. If the system can’t deliver basic benchmark levels of life expectancy it is not working. It is not as if pre 1989 it was fabulously high. It was already a bit below the west.

Russia has recovered a bit form that disaster and to understand the puzzling popularity of Putin is to know he stabilized a very bad situation. I think he has misjudged Russian power and influences on this invasion of the Ukraine but it is very early days yet. THe Russian forces in the South are on the whole quite successful and quite fast. Very likely the Kiev encirclement is going slower than hoped but the odd tactic of the Russians to attack everywhere at once splitting their forces also splits the Ukrainian army as well. It is now a war of attrition and so long as the Russians lose troops and tanks 1:1 with the Ukrainian army time is on the Russians side. If the 1:1 ratio is maintained there wil come a point wher the Ukranian army is too weak to put troops in so many different places in any meaningful way and then the Russians can connect up and concentrate on some single objective like Kiev. I think we are all blinded by some outstanding one sided press given to the plucky Ukrainians as they fight a hopeless fight.

SO many sanctions on the Russians will make them keen to finish militarily and open to compromise on the eventual diplomatic or occupation conditions. They are not enough to affect the military situation on the ground and may actually give Russia an incentive to win in a military sense.

Firing all the sanctions one can fire too early gives little leverage from now on with regards to the actual fighting. I expect in a military sense it will be all over in weeks. Max 10 weeks. Troop Losses on both sides ruining at 200 to 400 per day or so. That rate of loss is difficult for either side for more than 100 days. Certainly not for 300. Of course there could be a low level insurgency for years following that but the formal phase will be over.

True.

I bought a Lada in 1982. Can’t buy anything today made in Russia on the shelves after 30 years of supposed integration into the world economy. We buy raw materials and they buy our goods and Gucci bags. Sad really. Nothing justifies war but they got a raw deal and are angry. Fantastic riches were promised if they abandoned the system they had. Now they have an economy 1/10th the size of China. A minnow with a big military but one not performing as well as expected. Lashing out it seems in frustration.

Sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine are "manageable" for Britain's insurers and wider financial sector, Bank of England Deputy Governor Sam Woods said on Tuesday.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-7